Vintage Inspired Wedding Cake

I  have been impatient to show you this wedding cake that I designed and made this week.  I was meant to wait until I made a light box and get proper photos but decided today I just couldn't wait anymore because I really love it and wanted to show it off. Bad I know. I will put up the proper photos when I get the light box made.  This cake is not actually a cake but made of styrofoam cake rounds.  I am working on coming up with potential cake designs to give people an idea of what they can have for their wedding cake and this is the first one.  I couldn't be happier with it.  I will say that I will not be your traditional wedding cake designer with the traditional flowers and ribbon around the bottom.  These cakes are nice but I am passionate about the theme of a wedding showing through from the invites to the dresses to the table settings right to the cake.   I want brides to know that their possibilities are endless and they don't need to be confined by the traditional cakes with flowers.  

Chocolate covered peanut butter cookies

Jeans. A woman's worst enemy or very best friend when you find the right pair.  Since having baby number two jeans have definitely not been my friend and have caused me nothing but grief.  I can't tell you how many pairs I have tried on only to walk out of the store depressed.  The worst thing is that I am usually a pretty confident person but jeans just send me to madness.  I have been living in two pairs of old jeans that have been sitting in my closet from before having my son: a casual pair and a dressier black pair. Last week I put on the casual pair and nightmare of all nightmares, they ripped right up the pocket! Not to panic though, I did still have the black pair to get me through.  That was until I dropped my daughter off at kindy earlier this week and tripped and fell and put a hole in the knee(I am a pretty clumsy person).  I admitted defeat and knew it was time to get serious and be committed to finding a new pair of jeans.

So, after putting the kids to bed I kissed my husband good-bye and went off in pursuit of the perfect pair.  I was ready to feel a bit depressed after all I was already feeling a bit bummed from having said good-bye to one of my best friends today. The first shop I went in was having a sale so a little light started to shine through the black cloud sitting over my head.  I love a good sale. I grabbed four pairs of jeans and the second dressier pair I put on was unbelievably perfect!  It sat at all the right places, was the perfect comfort and was a brilliant price.  I couldn't believe my luck and suddenly felt immensely better.  Would it be pressing my luck to carry on and try and find a casual pair as well?  Definitely not!  The next store I went in (also having a sale!) had the perfect pair of casual jeans and I only had to try on two pairs.  Things are definitely looking up and now I can sit comfortably on my couch in comfortable jeans or comfortably go out to dinner in a dressier pair of jeans.   The best part?  I don't have to feel too guilty about eating yummy biscuits like these Chocolate peanut butter cookies.

Yummmm.  When I think about these cookies I want to get up and make them all over again (they went almost quicker than they took to make).  They are incredibly fun looking when you bite into them and they have the rich chocolate taste of a brownie balanced by the peanut butter middle.  These are a bit time consuming to make but they were a lot of fun for me and my daughter to put together and were definitely well worth it.  I followed one reviewers advice and added an extra tablespoon of milk as the chocolate mixture was a little dry.  I also found it helped to evenly divide out the two seperate mixtures as evenly possible into 30 balls before putting them together so that I knew I had enough at the end and didn't end up with leftover mixture for either mix.

Click here for the recipe

Chinese Take-away cake

This cake has been a difficult cake to do.  Not in the sense that it was complicated but in the sense that the reason I made this cake was difficult.  This cake has been made as a good-bye to a very close couple of my husband and I who are moving to China for two years. When they told us they were moving it felt like it would be ages before they left and there was plenty of time to catch up and spend time together but now the time is nearly up and I am left feeling quite sad.  Its never nice being the person left behind but even more than that I am losing my 'go to' person as I would call it.  The person I call whenever there is the slightest problem, whenever I am stressed or just want a good chat.  These two are more than friends, they are family.  We have said quite a few good-byes with them over the years and we always pick up where we left off but its still hard.

In spite of the fact that they are leaving and I am sad I am also super excited for them.   What an opportunity to work in another country for two years!  My husband and I had the opportunity to travel China a few years ago and we fell in love with it and know that if we were in the same position as them we would probably be doing the same thing.

The cake itself is a vanilla pound cake with a chocolate buttercream covered in fondant.  The lid, fortune cookies and veggies are made out of gumpaste which is a first for me.  The noodles are made out of fondant and the chopsticks and prawn are made out of modeling chocolate.  The pagoda has been hand painted with a mixture of food coloring and lemon essence.

Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes

I've had a block this last two weeks.  Its not as though I haven't been baking, I have! The thought of sitting down and writing about the baking has been a bit draining and I have felt extremely uninspired. I think possibly a combination of being sick and having a boy who is not sleeping the greatest at night doesn't help.  I also have to blame my sister as she sent me the first three seasons of the TV series Ace of Cakes and my husband and I have been spending our evenings watching as many episodes as we can stay awake for.  I consider it research and training.

Anyway, now I have a big backlog of baking to catch you up on.  It may come in drips and drabs between any cakes I am making.

Last week my Aunty came and stayed with my children so that my husband and I could have a night away.  I cannot tell you how wonderful this was!   We had an incredible time watching USA vs Canada in the ice hockey (even if the fans were 70% for Canada and 30% for USA and even though USA lost).  Can you believe that we didn't even talk about our kids once the entire night!  I felt a bit sorry for some friends the next day though as I think I made up for the lack of talking about them the night before.  I was beginning to miss them!

For the weekend I tried to make sure I had plenty of yummy treats for my aunty and my daughter to snack away on.  When I saw a post about cinnamon roll cupcakes I knew they would be perfect as you can eat them any time of day pretty much! I used a recipe for cinnamon rolls and changed it a little to make them into tiny cupcakes. I find I can never eat an entire cinnamon roll so this suited me just fine.  Click here to see the recipe.  When rolling out the dough, roll it out 22" x 12".  Once mixture is spread onto it and rolled up, cut into 24 small rolls and place each roll into a cupcake case.  Bake rolls in a preheated oven for approximately 12 minutes. If you don't have a bread maker there is a hint from one of the reviewers on how to make it without it.  I was just lazy.  The icing is pretty incredible and you wont be disappointed.  Either ice while still warm so that the icing melts into the buns or wait until cool and microwave for 10-20 seconds before eating. Yummm!

Fairy Princess Cupcakes

This weeks cupcakes are special because the recipient of these cupcakes is very special to me!  It occurred to me that I hadn't made special cupcakes for one of the most important people in my life, my daughter!  Sometimes its so easy for me to get caught up in projects and life that I forget about the little people.  Being a stay-at-home mum doesn't mean that I am 'home' with my kids.  I so often get wrapped up in needing to get something cleaned or something baked or something organized that my daughter is at my side begging me to come to her room or sit down with her.  I find myself saying 'let me just get this done' or 'let me just do this'.  My constant battle being a mum at home has been to actually be present with my kids.  I felt pretty convicted of this and have been consciously trying to set aside special time for my kids.  Yesterday I decided that I would put on a 'tea party' for my daughter.  We made special invitations for her friend and walked to her house and put the invite in the mailbox.  Then today we got dressed up in pretty dresses, made beautiful fairy crowns, had yummy fairy princess cupcakes and pink fairy princess tea.  It was so much fun! The girls loved it and it held their attention longer than most things which for two year olds can be a challenge.

For the fairy princess cupcakes I used the previously published Zebra Cake but instead of adding the coco I kept the cake entirely vanilla.  I split the batter into two bowls and coloured one bowl with pink food colouring and the other with teal.  I lined 18 cupcake tins and I then put one tablespoonful of the pink colouring in the bottom of each liner.  I then followed by putting one tablespoonful of teal colour in the centre of the pink.  I then followed with one tablespoon of the pink and then approximately or slightly less of the teal again.  (you want the cases to be 3/4 full).  I baked these in a preheated oven 350 degrees F/180 degrees C for 18-20 minutes or until the tops sprung back.  On the top of the cupcakes I put the previously published buttercream icing and placed butterflies made from modelling chocolate.  The cupcakes themselves taste ok BUT they look incredibly fun and the icing tastes great which to two year olds is all that matters!

Congratulations Bouquet!

What a funny crazy day.  My daughter said it best when daddy was tucking her in tonight: "Mummy is crazy." Yes darling girl, mummy is crazy! Why, you ask? I drove at least an hour today up and down looking for the road that my friend lives on, only to find out that I was on the wrong road to begin with! I eventually did find where I needed to go but insanely did not give up and go home and call my friend after at least 30 minutes (because I didn't have her number) because I was a woman on a mission! I had promised my little girl we were going to see her friend and when you have already loaded two kids in the car and they were quietly sitting in the back seat like little angels there was NO way I was going home.  We got to visit for only a short half hour but it was worth it for several reasons.  I saw the most amazing rainbow, I had cuddles with a brand new baby, I was able to give my friend a bouquet of cupcakes and my 2 year old said thank you for bringing her to her friends house.  All very much worth it!

8 years with my husband!

Where has the time gone?  Ten and a half years ago I met my husband and eight years ago we said I do.  He is my best friend and I am still as crazy about him now, even more than I was back then.  We have done so much in 8 years, worked and travelled around the world, renovated a house, had two kids, gone through several different jobs.  Each new thing has always brought about a new obstacle or challenge but we both have met it head on and overcome it.  I feel a little sad when people say 'good job' for getting to eight years because so often marriages don't make it past seven years.  To me, 'good job' will be when we have been married for 50 years and can still joke and laugh with one another and can still sit at the table after dinner and talk about our day, our fears and our dreams and still be a team.  The day that we stop working at communicating, working at putting each other before our kids and our jobs and working at loving one another is when we stop doing a 'good job' and I don't ever want to get to that place.  I love you babe and I look forward to many more years together.

For our anniversary I made my husband a cake.  This cake is of a hockey puck with the USA hockey team logo on it.  We both share a love of ice hockey and ironically there is very little ice hockey in New Zealand.  Unless you live in a big city or down in the south island it is virtually non-existent.  So you can imagine our excitement when we found out that USA and Canada were coming to play each other in New Zealand!  The game happens to be in a couple of weeks so we have been looking forward to it as a post anniversary date! We are going All-American to this game and will be sporting our ice hockey jerseys proudly.

This cake is a chocolate guinness mudcake with a baileys buttercream filling and a dark chocolate whiskey ganache.  Definitely not a cake for the kids and boy was it yummy!